Is the government angry?

Various reports are suggesting that the government is angry with the rate of achievement during this parliamentary session. These reports indicate that the parliament is not as “cooperative” as it “should” be with the government, and not completing new legislations at a fast enough rate.

In most parliamentary systems in the world, it is the government that worries about whether the parliament is unhappy, and not the other way around. In Jordan, the prime minister can recommend to the king to dissolve the parliament, which as been threatened in the past. Rarely does the parliament exercise its right to withdraw confidence from the government, although this has been threatened in the past as well.

The government has been less than accommodating to the government than is usual. Although they approved the terror prevention law and the financial disclosure law (which has finally been approved by the senate), a whole host of other laws were either rejected or rewritten to the point that they lost their purpose.

For example, they approved changing the sales tax law, but only after deleting fuel and cement from the list of commodities to which it was to be applied. The senate subsequently rejected the whole legislation, because of it needed “reconsideration”. Reconsideration could have been done by the senate itself, but of course that was not the point. Without including fuel and cement in the sales tax, the reason for modifying the law is lost. This way, after the “reconsideration” is done, the government can send it back to the house with the original list of commodities, including fuel. The next time, they will exert greater pressure to impose the tax on fuel and cement.

The parliament went against the government on the income tax law as well. They approved the legislation only after significant modifications. These included raising deductions from the government’s proposed JD 13000 per year up to JD 20000. They also raised the tax on banks and financial institutions to 35% instead of the government’s 25%. No complaints here.

The deputies went overboard in their discussion of the Fatwa and Mosque sermon and teaching laws. The fatwa law is supposed to put an end to the fatwa bazaar inflicting society. Under the government proposed law, issuance of a fatwa became under the jurisdiction of a state appointed board. The deputies changed the law to allow for anybody “qualified” to issue a fatwa, which defeats the purpose of the legislation. The senate rejected this modification and sent it back to the house.

The Mosque sermon and teaching law gives the minister of religious affairs (awqaf) the right to approve preachers and teachers in mosques, and prevent others from taking the pulpit. This is needed to control the teaching and preaching of extremist ideology in mosques. The deputies kept the clause allowing the minister to appoint preachers, but left out teachers from the law. Again, this defeats the purpose. The senate rejected the modification and sent it back to the house. Jamil Nimri has suggested that both the fatwa and preaching laws should be passed without the modifications introduced by the house. Today the house approved including mosque teachers as well as preachers in the law.

So, the house has had both good and bad moments. The system has fail safes that seem to work well. I would neither trust the senate nor the house alone, but working together they seem to keep each other in line.

As for the government being unhappy, there is no clause in the constitution that states that the parliament should have the approval of the government. Expecting to pass 42 laws in a month was unrealistic to begin with. The legislative branch should never become a rubber stamp, as Fahd Khitan and I have said before.